


Castle Books and Other Safe Havens to Escape From

by ms_m_bookworm



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, How does this work, M/M, Pining, Please Don't Hate Me, Uuuhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 18:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_m_bookworm/pseuds/ms_m_bookworm
Summary: Alternate title - Shiro is a human disaster send helpShiro has been quietly coasting since he was medically discharged from the Air Force, barely taking classes at the local community college, and spending most of his time working at Castle Books. There he feels comfortable, but he has gotten stuck in a rut without really ever noticing that he fell in. Enter Keith, who just started working at the gym next door, and is the most amazing man Shiro has ever seen. Maybe if he gets his life together, Keith will notice him? Allura and the rest of the gang watch in pity and amusement as Shiro just really tries his best, you guys.





	1. Introductions Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, so I haven't written fanfiction since some disastrous attempts in the Buffy fandom like 8 years ago that are best left forgotten. But this idea was stuck in my head so I thought I would give it a go. SO if it sucks please tell me nicely?

Music echoed through the nearly empty bookstore. Standing behind the counter, gently swaying in place while he cleaned a stack of books, stood Takashi Shirogane. The man loudly sang along with Patsy Cline, making his way through the backlog of books that needed to be processed and put out on the overstuffed shelves. Shiro was the only one working at Castle Books that day, the slowness of a Monday meaning that Coran and Allura could take the day off.

The little store was at home in a small shopping center, wedged between a coffee shop and a small satellite office of the DMV. On the weekend, people forced to go to the DMV for one reason or another would flood the small store next door, drawn in by the colorful displays, eager to relax after the stressful experience of having to deal with the DMV. No one escaped unstressed, as even just getting in line at the place was a nightmare, the front counter run by an awful old woman that everyone called Haggar, though not to her face. She could probably kill a man with a look, so it was best not to push it.

However, on Mondays Castle Books was usually slow, and it gave Shiro time to process the books that they had been bought from customers over the weekend. It also gave Shiro a chance to sing loudly, and very poorly, with no one to around to judge him for it. Shiro liked singing, but he fully acknowledged the fact that he couldn’t hope to carry a tune in a bucket if his life depended on it, yet he rarely let that stop him. Whenever Allura had the misfortune of being nearby when he started belting an out of tune rendition of Back in Baby’s Arms, or something equally incongruous, she would sigh deeply and ask him if he couldn’t just please shut up. Shiro would just grin “Life’s too short to not enjoy the little things in life ‘Llura”. In contrast, Coran tended to join in with the singing, even though he was just as bad as Shiro. Both of them had far more enthusiasm than talent.

Technically Coran owned Castle Books, having bought it years ago it after his grandfather, the original owner, had become too old to manage the place. However, Allura had worked in the store since she was sixteen, and after ten years of working there she knew the inner workings of the store better then Coran or Shiro could ever hope too. She ran the store with an iron fist, and Coran openly acknowledged that the store would fall apart without her. Allura was the real boss, Coran just wrote the checks.

Shiro, on the other hand, was relatively new to the store and had only started working there three years ago.

He had stumbled into the store one afternoon, clutching a folder full of paperwork for the local community college to his chest with his prosthetic arm. He had just spent a harrowing three hours at the college filling out form after form. Fill out this form to pick a major, this one to take advantage of the GI bill, this one to pick classes, now go to this office to fill out billing information, now go to the building across the quad to fill out information for parking, just an endless stream of bureaucratic nightmares. He had fled to Castle Books to try and unwind after the stress of the morning and had ended up walking into the tail end of an argument.

“We need to hire somebody Coran! We cannot run this place just the two of us, it is just not possible!” A softly accented voice, filled with annoyance, drifted over the shelves and to Shiro as he stood, dumbfounded at the sheer amount of _stuff_ that was crammed into this tiny store. Another voice, Coran Shiro assumed, carried “I don’t see why not! We managed just fine before Shay left, we can do it once more! I believe in us!” As Shiro walked through the maze-like shelves, he caught sight of the two speakers. A ginger man with a truly impressive mustache stood behind a register, gesturing wildly as he talked. “With a little can-do spirit and some hard work and we can keep this ship afloat no trouble!”.

The woman, a dark-skinned with thick curly hair pulled back into a severe ponytail that puffed out behind her head, did not look overly impressed with this Coran’s motivational speech. “Coran, before Shay started we barely managed it, and we are easily three times as busy now as we were then! We _need_ more help. For god's sake man, I have no intention of going back to working seven days a week!” The woman’s face, twisted in irritation, instantly smoothed into a wide smile and bright eyes when she noticed Shiro. “Oh hello! Welcome in, can I help you with anything?” Shiro blinked. Well, that was an about-face, she sounded completely different, eager and friendly, rather than hostile and annoyed, in the blink of an eye.

“Um. No I, I’m good. Just… looking I guess.” He watched as her eyes seemed to dim slightly, clearly disappointed, but she maintained her Customer Service™ smile. It was slightly terrifying actually.  

“Well if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask!” With that she turned back to the ginger man, Coran, giving the man a pointed dirty look.

“Actually…” Shiro took a breath, not really sure what was making him think this was a good idea, “I couldn’t help but overhear… Do you think I could apply for that job you were talking about?”

He did need work, while he had his pension it was hardly enough to afford the rent of his shitty little apartment. However, he wasn’t entirely sure why he felt the urge to ask for a job from these two strangers. Well he did know why, he was desperate. Filling out application after application for menial retail jobs was getting him nowhere fast. He had never really planned for a life that didn’t include the military in some way. He had joined the Air Force at seventeen, had dreamed of flying one day, planned on a career as a pilot. That dream had ended with a bang when an IED took his arm, and his 20-20 vision some flying shrapnel to the head. Now he lived with a prosthetic arm and contacts, and he would never get to fly. Sure, he had was still breathing, had life left to live, but at times it felt like that bomb had taken his future away along with his arm. He had only recently been shipped home and was still trying to find his footing. He had taken the first step this morning, filling out the endless forms at the community college, step two was to get a job so that he could buy something other than Top Ramen for dinner.

The dark-skinned woman blinked at him. She looked him up and down, lingering briefly on his arm, but Shiro was getting used to that. Kind of. She narrowed her eyes at him, “Can you lift boxes?”

“Um. Yes, ma’am.”

She wrinkled her button nose at him, “Don’t call me ma’am. Do you have to be anywhere in the next hour or so?”

Shiro pretended to think _, hm well I had some quality wall staring time booked but that can be pushed back to Zero Dark Thirty if need be, guess I’m free._ “No, I’m free.”

“Excellent.” She held out a hand, “My name is Allura, this is Coran, welcome to a job interview.”

What followed was a two-hour interview, where Shiro pulled up his sad resume on his phone, and Allura and Coran asked him questions like “Are you allergic to mold?” and “If a customer called you a capitalist pig how do you think you would react?”. The answers to which were “I don’t think so?” and “Um, smile as apologize that they felt that way?”. It was the weirdest job interview that Shiro had ever had, but to be fair it was also the only job interview he had ever had.

They had hired him that day, he started the next.

That was three years ago, and over the years he had cleaned thousands of old books, been called many nasty names, and found out that he actually was slightly allergic to some molds. He was also slowly making his way through an associates degree at the community college. By all rights, he should have been done ages ago, but he was taking his time, and kept taking classes that interested him, but failed to actually get him that much closer to a degree.

“ _I walk for miles along the highway, Well, that's just my way, Of sayin' I love you, I'm always walkin'_ ” He sang confidently and poorly, slowly using an old rag to wipe down a stack of romance novels that they had gotten in over the weekend. He was drifting in his head, planning his next baking experiment, when he heard a laugh. Jerking his head up, he stopped singing, eyes going wide as they took in the man in front of him. Oh god. Leaning against the counter, wearing the uniform of the gym from the end of the shopping center (Blade of Marmora, part gym part self-defense studio), stood the most beautiful man Shiro had seen in a long time. His black hair was pulled into a low ponytail, with just a few strands falling into his eyes, which were ever so slightly almond shaped, and a shade of blue that almost looked purple in the harsh light of the fluorescents. _God, and I thought only Allura could look good under fluorescent lighting._

Shiro was sure he looked like a fish, standing there, dirty rag in hand, mouth agape, so he struggled to regain his composure. “Hi! Sorry, can I uh, help you?” _Smooth Shirogane, real smooth._

The beautiful man just smiled softly. “No worries man, I was just stopping by to check the place out.”

Shiro nodded dumbly, “You work at the Blade huh? Are you new there?” He gestured to the man's shirt, realizing abruptly that he still held the gross rag that he had been cleaning books with, and dropping it desperately, trying to shove it out of sight.

“Kinda, my uncles own the place, so I’ve filled in for instructors a couple of times before, but they hired me for real recently.” As he talked, he pushed some of the hair that had escaped the ponytail behind an ear, where it immediately fell back into his eyes. Shiro’s mouth felt dry. “Names Keith.” He held out a hand. Shiro hesitated a moment, before reaching out with his prosthetic arm, shaking gently. “Takashi Shirogane, but everyone calls me Shiro.”

Keith beamed at him, not even blinking at the feel of the prosthetic. “Good to meet you, Shiro. Well, I gotta head out, class to teach, I’ll see you around though.” And with that, he wandered out of the bookstore. Shiro watched him walk toward Blade of Marmora through the front windows of the store. The yoga pants that the Blade had all their employees wear giving doing little to hide the mans'… assets.

He whimpered softly.

The rest of the night passed in a daze. He helped the few people who wandered in to find what they were looking for, and he eventually got the stack of paperbacks cleaned and shelved. Later that night he stumbled into his apartment, trying not to trip over his cat as she did her level best to do figure eights around his ankles. He fed Blackie (he wasn’t great with okay) and scratched her behind the ears, lost in his own head again.

_Keith... Huh._


	2. Introductions Part 2

The clouds were grey, the sky was full of the sounds of rain, and Shiro already regretted getting out of bed this morning. He had stumbled his way through waking up and was punching buttons on the coffee maker with clumsy fingers to try and get the ancient thing to work. Unfortunately for Shiro, the old beast decided that rather than black gold, it would dispense blue smoke, making a faint hissing sound as the small red light on the front dimmed. _Damnit._

Already annoyed due to a criminal lack of coffee, Shiro had been less than pleased to find that overnight Blackie in a fit of late night cat rage madness had puked in his basket of clean laundry. Muttering curses under his breath, Shiro dug through his closet, trying to find something, anything, to wear. He had to open the store today, and if he wanted to be caffeinated for it he had to leave soon enough that he could swing by Galaxy Coffee.

When he finally left his apartment, he was clad in a t-shirt that he usually reserved for lazy days at home. Three sizes too big, the shirt read “it’s just a flesh wound”, a picture of an armless knight on the front. He thought it was hilarious, but not everyone understood Monty Python references, and more than one soccer mom had given him dirty looks at the grocery store while he was wearing it.

Galaxy Coffee was right next door to Castle Books. A young man named Hunk owned to place, running it with his roommate Pidge. Hunk had built a reputation for his little store as having some seriously good food along with some great coffee. Rather than employing a small army of baristas, the store had an absurdly complicated machine that Pidge had built. According to Pidge it could make any type of coffee you wanted, no matter how complicated. They named it Rover. All Shiro cared was that it produced hot coffee for those mornings when his old machine wasn’t feeling up to it.

Coming in the store he waved to Pidge, who had commandeered several tables in a corner to spread out her latest robotics project. She waved absentmindedly back at him, eyes obscured by the glare of her glasses by whatever it was she was doing on her laptop.  Coding maybe, but then again it was equally likely that she was just distracted by explaining all the different ways someone was wrong on the internet.

Hunk stood behind the counter, arranging bagels in the glass display case. The happy man was humming along with the piano music that played softly in the background. Hunk had confided in Shiro once that he didn’t particularly care for the soft coffee shop music, but that it was what people expected, and it meant he and Pidge didn’t fight over whose turn it was to pick a playlist. Hunk looked up and smiled, a big genuine grin. “Hey, Shiro! What’s up, man? Usually we don’t see you in here till lunch time!”

Shiro smiled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed that he was apparently so predictable.  “Coffee machine started spewing blue smoke this morning, figured it wasn’t worth my life to try and make it give up the goods.”

Hunk laughed, eyes crinkling at the edges. “Well, we can’t have you dealing with the hordes without proper caffeination. One hot black coffee, coming right up! Give me just a sec to get Rover here started up.” He fondly patted the machine.

Shiro nodded and wandered over to peer at what Pidge was doing. She had moved on from speedy typing and was poking at a circuit board, looking at it like it had disappointed her in some way. “How goes it Pidgeon?” She shifted her disappointed look to him, looking at him with impressive disdain over the top of her glasses.

“I thought I told you to stop calling me that?”

“You told me not to call you that in front of customers because it weakened your authority over them.” He took a dramatic look around the empty shop, “I don’t see customers around, do you Pidgeon?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she pointed at him with her soldering iron. “Thin ice Shirogane. Thin fucking ice.” Then she turned back to the offending circuit board, apparently annoyed enough with him that she planned to ignore him.

Shiro wandered back up to the counter, just as Hunk was snapping a lid on a large takeaway cup. “See you around lunchtime Shiro?”

“Uh not today I think.” Shiro still felt slightly embarrassed that he had apparently become completely predictable. “I think today I might stop by and see what the McClain’s have on offer. Switch it up you know.”

Hunk’s face betrayed how surprised he was to hear this, which only reinforced Shiro’s choice really. “Oh? Cool, cool, Lance is working today, say hi for me?”

“Please, like you won’t be texting him all day long.” Pidge piped up from her corner and made a fake gagging noise. “You two are disgustingly smitten with each other.”

Hunk turned bright red “Pidge!”

“What? You are!”

Shiro was slightly confused. “Wait, you and Lance? Lance McClain?”

Hunk was still red, but he turned to Shiro with a slight scowl. “Yeah what of it?”

“Woah, hey I was just surprised! Last time I saw Lance he was pestering Allura for her cell number!” Shiro raised his cup of coffee in surrender, backing up slightly.

Hunk sighed and rubbed his forehead “Sorry man, just touchy this morning.”

“He and Lance were being gross and affectionate in the parking lot this morning, and Hagar from the DMV came out from her lair to give them a lecture on public decency.” Pidge had never really looked up from her project, a slight hiss of her soldering adding background noise as she talked.

Hunk sighed “That woman needs a hobby I swear. Sorry to snap at you Shiro.”

“Don’t stress about it Hunk. Look I have to go open the store, talk to you later ok.” He smiled at Hunk “I am happy for you, you and Lance.” With that, Shiro walked out to set things up at the bookstore.

~~~

It had been a long morning at Castle Books. A customer had brought in four boxes of books to sell that they had refused to acknowledge were gross. They must have been kept in a garage or someplace equally prone to spiders, as the insides of the boxes were almost more webs than books. Shiro had told the man that they wouldn’t be buying them and that he needed to take them away. He did not take it well.

Since then Allura had come in to help with things, bringing with her a sense of order to the store. She had also co-opted the stereo, switching out Patsy Cline’s greatest hits for some Katy Perry album. Shiro had made a face at her, but she had ignored him and started singing along with the pop nightmare.

“I’m going to go get some lunch, kay princess?”

“Hmm? Alright, say hi to Hunk for me” Allura barely looked up from where she was alphabetizing their small section of audiobooks as she waved him off.

“Actually, I was going to see what the McClain’s had today.” He wasn’t _that_ predictable, was he? Geeze, he needed to get out more.

Allura looked up, cocking a single perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Really? Oh well, in that case, please do _not_ say hi to Lance for me.”

“Oh hey, I forgot to tell you, I was talking to Hunk this morning, apparently Lance and Hunk are a thing now. Like a proper thing.”

Allura’s other eyebrow joined the first, looking slightly shocked. “Really? Oh well, in that case, offer my congratulations then.”

He offered her a sloppy salute as he walked out, heading a few doors down, past the DMV to Maria’s Market. The Latin grocery store was run by the McClain family, and as far as Shiro knew there was no Maria. Coran had guessed that it was the McClain’s way of playing into people’s expectations. All of the McClain children (and there were several of them) spent some of their time working the at their parents’ store, but their middle child Lance spent the most time at Maria’s, running the cash register for the store. They mostly sold imported brands that you couldn’t get at the normal grocery store. It had an air more like a well stock gas station store than a chain grocery store, but Shiro appreciated it. Shiro also had a soft spot for the incredibly spicy chips that they sold, ones that he didn’t actually know how to say the name of.

Tucked in the back of the store was a small café sort of area, where they served a mix of Cuban and Mexican food, depending on if the Cuban Mrs. McClain was doing the cooking or if her Mexican daughter-in-law Lilly was. Today was a Lilly day it looked like, so Shiro ordered a plate of tacos. As Lilly threw the food on the grill with a smile, Shiro wandered off to find Lance.

When he found him, he was leaning against the front counter, face buried in his phone, giggling quietly.

“Hey buddy, how’s it going?” Lance nearly jumped out of his skin, dropping his phone off the side of the counter.

“Geeze Shiro, what the hell man?” He held one hand to his heart, and another to his forehead, striking a dramatic pose. “Give a man a heart attack!” Shiro rolled his eyes as he picked up Lance’s phone off the ground. On the screen was his text app, showing a selfie of Hunk, looking aggrieved, and the most recent text was an apology that he couldn’t escape for lunch.

“Drama queen. Heard about you and Hunk by the way, mazeltov.” Shiro stood, and handed back the phone, smiling at the excitable man. Lance turned a faint pink at the congratulations, dropping the drama in favor of looking down at the counter.

“Uh yeah, thanks man, still new ya’ know? Still getting used to it.” He sounded bashful, a rare thing for the usually overly brash man.

Shiro just smiled and clapped the younger man on the shoulder.  “Well I’m happy for you Lance, I think you and Hunk will be good for each other.”

They chatted for a little longer before Lilly waved at Shiro to come to pick up his order. “Did I get the real salsa today, or have I been relegated to the white people kind again?” Lilly just laughed at him and waved him off, which likely meant that he would open his take away box to find a small container of the tasty, but very mild, salsa that they gave out to the white folk who wandered in, and occasionally Shiro when Lilly felt like mocking him. The ‘real’ salsa was likely made of dragon fire, and while it was delicious on Lilly’s tacos, it probably could be used to clean rust off a car in a pinch, so Shiro didn’t complain too much when he was downgraded to the white people stuff.

He turned to wave to Lance on the way out, but it looked as if he had been reabsorbed by his phone. As he opened to door, still looking over his shoulder, he ran into someone who had been walking along the path outside the store. He stumbled back, but just managed to avoid sending his lunch spilling all over the McClain’s floor.

“God I’m sorry, my bad I should have looked…” He trailed off as he did look and saw those piercing purple-blue eyes that had occupied his daydreams since he first saw them a few days ago. He had spent more time than he cared to admit since that Monday afternoon, trying to covertly spy into the Blade’s studio area in an effort to catch a glimpse of the man. However, this was the first time he had managed to see the other since.

Shiro was abruptly aware of how he must look. He wore a too large shirt with a stupid joke on the front, one the suddenly didn’t seem quite as funny as it normally did, his jeans were covered in a layer of dust from where he had needed to climb behind a bookcase to retrieve a fallen book earlier, and his hair was a mess, having spent the morning running his hand through it in irritation. _God, I’m a mess._ In contrast, Keith stood there, hand caught on the wall to steady himself, cheeks faintly pink from the brisk wind, wearing a tight black shirt with Blade of Marmora logo emblazoned across the chest, and a pair of dark yoga pants that tucked into a pair of worn looking boots. The only bit of color on him was the red bomber jacket that he held tucked under an arm.

“Oh hey, Shirogane right?” the dark-haired man straightened up from where he had stumbled and smiled at Shiro.

“Uh, Shiro, please. Keith yeah?” As if he didn’t already know, as if he hadn't spent last night drinking too much cheap wine and regaling his cat with the story of how _pretty_ Keith was, and how it was unfair that someone so hot was could exist in the same world as a dork like Shiro. “Nice to uh, run into you again.” _Oh, geez nice dad joke Shirogane. Smooth. Not._

Thankfully Keith just laughed. “Nice one, well Shiro it was cool to see you, but I’ve got to hustle if I want to avoid another lecture from my Uncle Thace on punctuality. Hopefully next time we uh, _run_ into each other it will slightly less literal.” With that, he grinned at Shiro and jogged off in the direction of the gym.

Shiro stood there dazed for a minute. _I am really developing an appreciation for those ridiculous yoga pants. Wow._

Lance took this opportunity to bang on the window, startling Shiro so bad he nearly dropped his lunch. Again. He glared at the laughing man and stalked off back the Castle Books. _Time to bury my shame and embarrassment in tacos. God, why am I such a dork?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There really is a Mexican grocery store near where I work, and they really do have a small cafe where you can get tacos, and they really do give you mild salsa if you are white, and the really hot stuff they save for if they think you can handle it.

**Author's Note:**

> So I actually work in a used bookstore, next to something similar to a DMV. Pretty much everything is REALLY fictionalized, but a lot of what working in a used bookstore is actually like is kinda drawn from my own experience. I hope I didn't go all inside baseball on things, and things a pretty dramatized, but I thought I would give this fanfic thing a try, and hey write what you know eh?


End file.
